Jun Li joined the Climate research team of Iddri as a doctoral researcher in January 2006. In March 2009, he completed his PhD Defense on "Policy Instruments for Building Energy Efficiency in China."
Extract
"More than one billion square meters of housing should be built in Chinese cities by 2020. At the same time, demand for energy services of Chinese households is very likely to increase as a result of continually improved living standards. Thus the energy performance of buildings in Chinese cities represents a major challenge for ensuring energy supply security and combating climate change in the next decades.
None of previous studies have studied the extent to which the current decision on more or less efficient standards in the large-scale urban infrastructure like buildings will have ultimately impact on the financing capacity in transforming the society toward low-carbon energy supply and consumption model, and the role the energy efficiency in buildings will play in enabling the public authority to harness the benefits resulting from reduced operation costs in early stage to facilitating the investment in new technology research and development and deployment in the future.
The thesis seeks to answer two fundamental questions: 1. is there an optimal development pathway to buildings energy performance standards in the context of extremely rapid urbanisation in China? 2. If so, what are political and economic instruments to put in place to limit growth in energy demand and CO2?emissions in this sector by taking the economic and institutional characteristics into account? Based on a modelling approach, we compare a variety of strategies to manage energy demand in buildings and their economic costs in a Chinese city by 2030."
View Jun Li PhD thesis (in English)